An automobile air conditioner of heat pump system, which is employable in an engine-driven automobile, an electric automobile and a hybrid vehicle, includes an air-cooling heat exchanger (evaporator) and an air-heating heat exchanger (condenser).
The automobile air conditioner of heat pump system uses the condenser as a heating device during air heating operation. However, this might cause the air conditioner to fail to provide sufficient air heating performance at extremely low temperature. To address this, it is desirable that the air conditioner should additionally use, as an auxiliary heating device, a heater core, which is a heat exchanger using, as a heating medium, the engine cooling water, when employed in the engine-driven automobile, or an electric heater when employed in the electric automobile.
However, the heater core and the electric heater are different in shape and size, so that different air conditioner housings have to be prepared for the engine-driven automobile and for the electric automobile.
Patent Document 1 discloses a method for making it possible to select the size or number of the heater cores in the housing. In this method, small heater cores or a single heater core, if employed, is mounted in the housing after housed in a frame body. However, Patent Document 1 does not disclose any method for selectively mounting two types of heating devices such as a heater core and an electric heater.